


blow a smoke ring for my halo

by scandalmonger



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brain Damage, Christianity, Dark, Dark Romance, Drama, Dubious Morality, F/M, Horror, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Not Happy, Obsessive Behavior, Older Man/Younger Woman, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sexual Content, Timeline What Timeline, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, Violent Thoughts, fat shaming language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-02-08 15:40:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12867735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scandalmonger/pseuds/scandalmonger
Summary: Maybe he would see how wrong she was and fix her.Or maybe she could break him and they could be broken together, fumbling with the broken shards of themselves and fitting their pieces together until two broken things became something surreal and new.





	1. Oh, the rest have made it

**Author's Note:**

> Because the world needs more dark!Beth stories, and apparently I mustered up the strength to somehow piece together my take on it.
> 
> Before anything, I would really like to start by saying that this work was inspired by two of the best dark fic stories I've seen in the fandom. It would be improper to not offer both [dynamicsymmetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry) and [Schwoozie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie) a great deal of gratitude for providing this fandom some incredible content, and to help in inspiring this story by writing incredibly raw and poignant stories about what could have happened if Beth had come back _wrong_.
> 
> I was so taken by the concept that I came up with this, and can only hope that it doesn't come across as a.) contrived and senseless and b.) a complete rip off of two incredible writers. XD
> 
> Please be forewarned that while this first chapter does not feature any sexual content (either in action or thought) that this story will eventually focus on how violence and obsession can turn romantic and sexual relationships very dark, very quickly. There will also be an exploration what would happen if a woman behaved in a sexually predatory manner towards a man. There will likely be dub-con situations in the future as well as disturbing sexual imagery, so please be forewarned.
> 
> As always, please comment and let me know what you think.

Everywhere she went, the smoke followed. 

It lingered. A heavy blanket over her senses, thick in her nose and on her tongue, sticking to her teeth and clogging her pores. She'd tried to explain it once. She'd looked into Maggie's earnest eyes and tried to explain why the lavender candles in her bedroom were pointless, why her food was tasteless, why Glenn's sweetly intentioned gift of a bottle of body spray had made her laugh. 

No one had laughed with her. 

If anything, they cringed at the sound. 

But her explanations were fruitless. They couldn’t smell the smoke, or taste the ash. Maggie didn't know, not really, what it was like to be so thoroughly wrapped in something. As tangled as she was in Glenn, as much as they pulled the other in and tried to make themselves into one, they were still separate from one another. For Beth, Grady was six hundred miles away but etched into her skin, into her muscle, soaked into her blood and running through her veins. The false promise of sterility and safety overturned by the cloud of smoke she had left in her wake, one hand around a gun and the other clenched into a fist. 

The smoke clung to her like a new skin. Fitting in a way, given the way she felt like she had risen from those ashes, not as a phoenix but something older and more desperate. The land between Atlanta and Washington was an endless battlefield weighed down by the dead of the old world, and she had crossed it with black plumes at her back and her heart drumming a song of victory beneath her breast. The beat of it echoed in her ears and thudded in her fingertips, bringing a swell of finality and power to her every breath, something that made her chest ache and her lungs burgeon with rapture. 

She knew she wasn't who she was before. Who she should have been. The girl they remembered was not the girl who had accidentally found those walls, but sometimes, just sometimes, even in a world so dark, people had to delude themselves and pretend. Maggie had to pretend she was the sister she remembered. Glenn had to pretend to not stare at the scars. 

Not see. 

Not hear what she was trying to tell them, with eyes too heavy and conscience too clear. 

To not smell the smoke. 

 

*****

 

In the end, all it took was dumb luck. 

A few scavengers promised a nearby community. They had walls and food and warm beds if she wanted to come with them and after so long on the road, with exhaustion so heavy in her bones, she would have been an idiot to not consider it. She had an exit strategy, as much as slitting their throats and disappearing into the night could be called a strategy, but the young man with the glasses and rich dark skin was more bark than bite. Too clean, too well cared for, and she suspended her desire to run far and away at the chance of a few nights rest. 

It was just dumb luck that Heath and his crew inadvertently led her where she needed to go. 

The first few hours following her arrival were a vigil. It was like celebrating her birth all over again, teary cheeks pressing to her own, desperate hands reaching and clinging to her with love and greed. Every shuddered breath against her skin had made her flesh crawl and itch, but she smiled just as sweet and vapid as they wanted and allowed the petting no matter how much she wanted to catch the hands and twist until the wrists snapped with a crisp crackle of bone. 

She was patient. She accepted Carol's hugs and fuss over her weight and even smiled indulgently at the jokes that she needed fed. She leaned into Rick's bristly kiss to the crown of her hair and melted under the warm weight of his hand on her neck. Beamed bright when Michonne gifted her a rare stunning smile and a kiss to the cheek that carried all the love of a favorite aunt. She folded herself into Glenn's bear hug. Even went so far as to reward the awkward, eager smiles and shoulder pats from the strangers who had joined her family when she was left behind and forgotten. 

Nodded and molded her cringe into a grin, chastised the thrum of her blood beating restlessly under her skin, and then happened to look up and see him. 

Daryl. 

Just out of reach, staring at her from under his fringe as though she were a mirage that would blink out of existence if he dared to look away. 

It took a second for her to feel a flicker of something other than the jittery numbness she had grown comfortable with. Just a second, but for one long moment she looked and saw his scruffy chin and lank hair and felt nothing more than recognition before there was a warm spark in her rib-cage, something that curled and settled in her belly and made her fingertips twitch with some forgotten need. But it was there, something, and she felt the odd desire to reach for him. 

As the minutes stretched and expanded, so did that feeling. She wanted to step away from the herd and press into his space. To crowd into him as she was crowded by the rest, to bury her nose into his shirt collar and inhale the smell of stale sweat and blood-stained leather. There was a thrill that ran through her at the thought, because she knew the secret language of him, had grown fluent in it, and she knew his response before she could even reach for him. She knew how he'd go tense and solid if her hands found his waist, how his Adam's apple would bob in an aborted swallow, how his scruff would scrape the tender flesh of her forehead as he muttered something short and perfunctory just for her, low and private with that voice that was equal parts smoke and gravel. 

She didn't get that chance. Not when she suddenly had so many hands and opinions once again deciding what was best for her. Herding her where they wanted. She only managed one aborted step in his direction, him her reticent mirror, before a hand was clasping her shoulder and turning her another way. Away from him and into her sister and brother in law's waiting arms until all she could do was watch him from behind Glenn's shoulder, where he was silent and still and watching. If she hadn't known him better she would have guessed him to be impassive, but she could read the disappointment in the taught muscle of his jaw and the uncertainty that pinched at the corners of his eyes. 

There was something about that subtle vulnerability that made her heart beat faster and her blood burn.

For a moment she considered shoving Maggie off of her. It'd be easy to twist out of her keening sister's grasp and stomp her heel down on Glenn's instep. Dodge and duck out of everyone's reach until she was close enough to smell him and feel the heat that gave off his skin. She didn't know what she would do then. What was allowed, what had changed. She wanted so many things, if only to be close and touch, to remind herself that those weeks in the woods had been real, that that time that had been just for them, where she had felt more alive and more right than anything that had happened before or after. Everything from before Grady felt so far away, cracked and distorted and make-believe. But the moonshiner's shack, the camps in the damp autumn leaves, the funeral home... they felt solid. They felt _real_. 

He felt real. 

Whether she hated or loved that feeling, she wasn't sure. But it warmed her, and she wanted to go to him, that much was certain. 

She could lace their hands together. Stroke the rough skin of his palm and push the pads of her fingers into his callouses. Press in close and feel the weight of his hand on her back, so strong and deadly yet so cautious. She could coax him into giving the braid in her hair a sharp tug, something he'd only ever done twice, but had done so playfully that at the time it had made her breath stutter away into surprised laughter. 

She could climb her way around him, bury herself in him, claw him open and crawl inside the safe brackets of his ribs with his lungs as her pillow and her lips pressed to his fluttering heart in a chaste kiss. 

A hot burst of _something_ curled low and sweet in her belly at the thought. It made her mouth dry and her palms wet, and felt like a second heartbeat thrumming gently under her skin and in her blood. 

Rip him open. Yes. 

The building heat pulsed warm and hungry, and she tried to gather the remaining wetness of her mouth and spread it across her teeth and inner lip with her tongue. Daryl's eyes were still on her, dark and searching, his chin tipped down towards the earth like a shunned dog and lightning fast she was angry at all the hands and bodies in her way. 

She could steal him away and live inside him, away from the searching eyes and gaping mouths, knowing that the last time she had felt at home it had been at his side rather than under a roof. Finally see that vulnerable sweetness with her own eyes, see if his heart was as golden as their haphazard family had joked or as bruised and scarred as his rough life had promised it to be. 

That could only happen if she would go to him. And Maggie, Glenn, they were between them. Her family was holding her hostage not even ten feet away, and the voice in her head was nothing more than a frustrated scream demanding she break free. 

But Beth was patient. She'd had to be back at Grady. Out on the road and belly deep in the wilderness. She could afford that patience more than ever behind thick high walls, as much as the goose pimples prickled her skin and her teeth gnawed at the inside of her lip from once-again feeling caged in. The nice clean streets and carefully trimmed lawns held the illusion of safety and openness, more so than the stifling hallways of the hospital ever could, but that didn't relieve her from knowing she was locked in. 

Trapped. 

She knew she wasn't the same. That she wasn't right. But seeing Daryl's weighty stare fueled her patience, set her stride, because she knew without a doubt that as wrong inside as she now was, at least she wasn't the only one regretting the boxed in feeling that overshadowed the safety of Alexandria's walls. She may have been broken, but they were both caught in the same trap. Two wild things who had been mistaken for house-pets and lured inside among the soft and domesticated, the unsuspecting, trying to play at civility and normality when all they wanted was to hunt, run, and taste the ash on the tips of their tongues. 

Maybe he would see how wrong she was and fix her. 

Or maybe she could break him and they could be broken together, fumbling with the broken shards of themselves and fitting their pieces together until two broken things became something surreal and new. 

 

*****

 

That first night was for Maggie alone. Glenn had either been sent away or had left without protest, leaving the sisters to themselves. 

For the longest time all Maggie could do was stare and touch. Her eyes had been wet and glassy for hours, the green shimmering and bloodshot, her nose rubbed red from tears and sniffling. Familiar fingers had settled on her shoulders, stroked through the tangled strands of her hair, delicately curled around the shape of her palm as if trying to read her life line like braille. 

It made her stomach squirm unpleasantly. 

"How?" Her sister whispered. 

Beth just blinked slowly in response. 

"How, what?" She didn't bother to whisper in return. In the silence of the house, in the dark back-lit by one small corner lamp and a few candles, it sounded as loud as a gunshot. "How did I live? How did I find you? How did I make it here?" 

Each question was a story of its own. She could spend hours, possibly even days, going through each painstaking detail of her journey. Start at the prison and work her way forward, days and weeks blurring together. She didn't know what Daryl had said of their time together, or if he'd even said anything at all. If Carol remembered anything from Grady. If she'd even had the presence of mind at the time to try and understand what she had seen of that place. 

There were so many variables. Pieces that built the short and shaky existence she'd shared with others and some that belonged solely to her. 

She wanted to keep it that way. Being selfish was such a novelty, something she had so rarely allowed herself to indulge in, but now that she had tasted the gratification of reveling in her own desires and owning them, she was reluctant to let that freedom go. 

After all, she had been left behind. Given up on. Dismissed and mourned. 

Again. 

When Maggie's lower lip trembled it was so maudlin, so Hollywood theatrical. Just the plaintive bright-eyed starlet shuddering with emotion that Beth could only stare at in fascination. She knew every line of Maggie's face, knew every freckle and acne scar, but the dissonance between her memory and the reality in front of her was staggering. Maggie's mouth pursed and shaking with emotion felt so far away, like a long-forgotten movie scene, and something hollow and swollen pulsed behind her sternum. Nothing felt right but in the strangest way she was at peace with that, and couldn't work up the need to worry about how little she cared.

"Oh, honey. All of it. Just... how. You're a miracle, you know that? You're my miracle." 

Beth smiled, sweet and serene. The kind of smile Maggie would remember. 

The kind of smile she wanted. 

"I just look at you and..." She trailed off, and Beth shifted in her seat. As easily as if following along on a teleprompter, she was sure of the words even before they were spoken. "I just think of Daddy. Of how happy he'd be. That you're here, and alive, and safe. That we're here together again, y'know? That's all he ever wanted. For us to make it. And... here we are." 

There was a churning low in her gut at Maggie's shock and awe. Her big sister; the strong one. The independent eldest who had always been a force to reckon with, with her determination and rebellion. The big sister who only ever saw Beth as a fragile little doll, too brittle and delicate for the world even before it had ended. It was like the past few years had done nothing but reinforce her impression of Beth's weakness. Seemingly forgetting the years they had spent working on Daddy's farm, up at the crack of dawn mucking horse stalls and straining to move hay bales and sacks of feed. As if they had never shared those long grueling months during that first winter out on the open road, with only their rag-tag group of misfits to protect and be protected by in turn. As though Beth had never held her own at the prison, taking watch and rotating fence duty. As if she hadn't ever held an assault rifle in her small pale hands. As if she hadn't survived weeks in the deep belly of the woods with Daryl as her guide and mentor, nurturing the instincts she carried but had not yet learned to trust and utilize. 

And here, behind giant steel walls six hundred miles from where she had fallen under the force of a bullet, her big sister still couldn’t imagine a world where little Beth Greene would survive. 

How it could even be possible. 

The squirming pulse in her stomach felt sharp and heavy, and Beth was aware of her fingernails digging sharp crescents into her palm. But she continued to smile, to afford Maggie that simple gift, even if the smile showed too many of her teeth and she suddenly wondered what it would feel like to squeeze her sister's throat and feel the flutter of her pulse beneath the pads of her fingertips as she thrashed for air. 

"Because I could." 

Maggie's answering smile wobbled with an ill-concealed edge of confusion, and smiling wider, Beth pressed her nails into her palms until she felt the skin split. 

Beth Greene knew she was strong. She could trust herself to live, to survive, to crawl through the wasteland and find the tiny flicker of life on the other side. She trusted her gun and her gut to guide her, and neither had steered her wrong since she had left Georgia. A cut to her wrist, a sprained ankle, a damn gunshot had done jack to steal her from this god forsaken world. She had been strong before and knew it with certainty. 

Now; after. 

She was broken now. But what had been broken had healed like a strip of welded steel, and now she was stronger. She had done what none of them could ever hope to do and she had done it alone. Her. Not Rick Grimes with his shredding self-control and the faint glimmer of blood-lust twinkling in the blue of his eyes. Not Carol with her paper-thin façade and crumbling resolve. Not even Daryl with his intuitive knowledge of the land, his fierce instinct, his Achilles heel in the form of his weathered kindness. She'd lived by herself, fended for herself, protected herself. Something, as she heard it, an entire group of armed survivors had scarcely managed in her absence. 

Comparatively, they were weak. But here she was, being marveled over and pitied. 

Out of however many living people in the world, she could only trust herself and one other person to believe her capability with certainty, without question. 

But Maggie would never be that person. 

 

*****

 

In another time or place, Beth thought she may have liked Olivia. 

The woman was so ill suited for the world now that it was borderline comical. Soft around the edges of both mind and body, hands un-calloused, her heavy curves freely advertising that she had never spent a day hungry on the road. Not the way that Beth had. She had diminished from petite and slim and into a lean waif built of stubborn bones and taut solid flesh. Not like Maggie whose thighs had tightened and ass had flattened when the fat had melted away under the Georgia sun. Or Michonne whose arms were braided ropes of muscle, nothing padded between the rich gleam of her dark skin and the raw strength underneath. 

Before Grady, before the turn, Beth would have seen Olivia's softness and been charmed by it. Would have admired the plushness, envied the full swell of her large breasts, and would have imagined that the woman would probably give the warmest, kindest hugs. 

Now she felt a strange sort of intrigue. 

Beth watched a trickle of sweat slide down the woman's temple as she worked to stock and count the new supplies from the recent run. Bags of rice and dried beans. Boxes of whole grain pasta which had launched an excited chatter among the housewives and toy soldiers. Little tins of salted mussels and cans of corned beef hash. 

The woman was stocking cans one by one in neat little rows and _sweating_. 

"Beth?" Olivia called, standing straight with a huff. Beth tried to ignore the angry little tremor that shook in her core, a dark squirming tendril that made her palms and feet itch when she noted the older woman's red flushed face. Her lack of breath. 

Stocking cans and out of breath. 

How was she alive? 

Blinking, Beth tore her eyes away from the streak of sweat still shining along the woman's hairline and forced an expectant smile. It felt crooked and brittle, like her lips were slowly forgetting the shape, but it must have looked alright. Alright enough for the dark-haired woman to smile in return, her cheeks ruddy from straining over boxes of supplies. 

"There's hygiene products in those two bins by the door." She nodded in the direction and even without looking, Beth was already nodding along with her. Silent and smiling. Something itching and scratching under her skin with a need she couldn't fully place, the need to move, to do something. Eyes darting towards that steady drip of sweat making a path along the older woman's face. 

She wanted to follow it with the tip of her knife. 

"Think you can get a head start on inventorying it for me?" The woman asked hopefully. There was the barest shade of authority to it. It sounded reluctant, like someone used to being a herd animal but attempting to play shepherd for once. Just a meek sheep in her heavy wool, hiding behind glasses and pretty dangling earrings. Someone the wolves would tear to shreds in a heartbeat, but trying to play the game and pretend that she belonged. Pretend that she had a right to give orders, and take charge of even one small thing, and live. 

That this woman had the audacity to live in the world as it was made Beth's knees quake. 

It was on the tip of her tongue. The urge to grab at the woman's hair and rip the strands from her head, hear her scream of surprise echo off the walls, claw at her soft fleshy neck and hidden collarbones. It made her fingers curl and her lip twitch in the beginning of a snarl. She wanted to see the white of Olivia's eyes behind the protective shield of her prescription lenses, and there it was, that little curl of imagination, the idea that she could snatch those precious frames right off the woman's face and smash them under her boots, leaving her exposed and hindered in this brutal world where anything could go wrong at any second and she'd literally be _blind_ to the danger... 

"Beth? Everything alright?" 

Pretending to startle was easy. Bat her lashes, pretend to shake off her daydreams, give that same brittle smile that felt more forced each time she pulled it out and dusted it off. 

"Sorry," she said, shrugging one shoulder, easily feigning abashed with her ducked chin and hands clasped to lace her fingers together. Eighteen years old and the very picture of a school girl apology. She squinted, mouth puckering the slightest bit before easing into a self-deprecating smile. 

Olivia was silent for a moment, the shine of that sweat trail still begging for her attention, still leaving a simmer of anger and resentment low in her belly. 

"Are you okay? I know your sister said you... I mean. Is it a headache? Do you need to go lay down for a bit?" 

The older woman's gaze was easily tracked, and Beth felt her skin prickle as those doleful brown eyes lingered on the puckered pink circle on her forehead. The truth was that her head did hurt. It always did, see-sawing between a steady pinch to a crashing migraine, but that wasn't this woman's concern. Shattered skull, scrambled brain, it didn’t matter because headaches or not she wasn't weak. She didn't need to take silly little breaks after the absolute minimum exertion, and despite her careful mask she almost cracked and gave in to her desire to say so. 

But she didn’t. As much as she wanted to make a point out of spite, one to Olivia, one to Maggie, it was actually the perfect opportunity. 

"Would you mind?" She said instead, and considered making a show of it. Maybe cringing in apology. Hunkering her head between her shoulders to look even smaller and frailer than she was. Instead she decided to scrap the drama of it, and just smiled instead. Straight neat teeth and healthy pink gums. 

Maybe too many teeth she considered, by the way the larger woman hesitated. 

"Of course not. Take the rest of the afternoon off. We can finish with the hygiene products tomorrow. It isn’t like anyone's going to have a shampoo emergency, right?" An awkward giggle, one that she might have once laughed along with, no matter how poor the joke was. Once again, had it been some forgotten place in the before, Beth found herself considering how much the old her, the un-broken her, may have liked this woman. Back at the prison, back home, where they could have gossiped between big steel tubs of laundry or over dinners of fresh venison, and her laughter wouldn’t have felt so rough and splintered. 

Now, she couldn’t wait to get away. From Olivia, from the pantry, from the insinuation that this was less of a job and more an excuse to keep her babysat and safe away from the walls. A whole day for herself, to finally get away from all of the well-intentioned hovering, the neediness, the hands and searching eyes. 

Maybe a day to sneak away and finally breathe without the strain of trying to pretend for all these plastic people living their fake plastic lives. 

 

*****

 

If it hadn't been for the disconcerting rise of the walls on every side, Beth's impression of Alexandria would have easily been boiled down to one solid thing: that it was insufferably boring. 

Children laughed and played in the streets. Dogs barked from their lawns. Housewives waved and wished her a polite hello as they walked past, in their neatly starched chinos and perfectly buttoned cardigans. If she hadn't known any better, she would have thought herself to have walked onto a movie set where everything was neat and pretty and the people hid their dull button eyes behind white shiny smiles.

Pleasantville, she thought, suddenly reminded of the movie she had once watched on Shawn's laptop, hidden in his room at his side, embarrassed and scandalized when the scenes were too mature for her young eyes. The only difference was the flesh hungry corpses on the other side of the steel walls, setting a stark contrast between the real world and the fantasy marooned inside. 

There was a nervous energy itching away under her skin, and every direction she turned, there was nothing there to scratch it. 

Instead she walked the streets with a critical eye, taking in each home and yard. There was something about the open curtains and bay windows looking into tidy sunlit rooms that set her teeth on edge. In a way it was almost perverse how unguarded these homes were, a type of provocation that just begged for wandering eyes to invite themselves in and peep. As she passed one home she could easily see a middle-aged woman sitting and reading in a day room from behind the clean glass and Beth nearly stumbled, her eyes locked onto the comfortable slouch of the woman's shoulders and her single-minded attention to the book in her lap. 

Something in Beth's core rattled and seethed, and she had to tear her eyes away as she quickened her steps. 

She was aimless. Pacing in a small cage with nothing to stimulate her, only growing more restless with the freedom she had afforded herself by leaving the pantry. As freeing as it was to finally be without a chaperone on her heels, the win was superficial and short lived. Every corner turned promised a wandering eye in her direction, a passive smile thrown her way, a stranger's hand raised in greeting. 

It set her teeth on edge and made her long for the isolation of the road. 

For a moment she stopped and considered simply turning back towards the houses afforded to the rest of her group. Shutting herself into her room and basking in the privacy of it, the petty victory of being alone. 

But shutting herself even further in was not the answer, and she ground her teeth in irritation. 

Maybe she was over thinking it. 

Squaring her shoulders, she left the main street and cut through the springy grass of the nearest yard. Up close the walls were a dingy pock marked grey, speckled with rust and looming in a worn barricade. The textures wavered between smooth in patches, gritty and oxidized in others, and she contemplated the scrape of the steel on her fingertips when she trailed her hand along the sun warmed metal as she paced. 

It was so _simple_. 

Funny how something so rudimentary was now heralded as a marvel of engineering. It was a basic design as far as she could see. Simple steel beams and plating, relying on the sturdiness of the foundation to function. Before the Turn it would have been so incredibly ugly. An eyesore mothers would have tutted, whining about curb appeal and riff-raff, the inevitable hit to the overall value of their big fancy neighborhood. 

Now those same mothers would look upon it like it promised salvation. And for the weak, it was. 

Beth frowned in disdain. 

As much as she chided herself to stay patient, to play along, to be good... her patience with the weak was waning thin. 

Olivia's face flashed in her mind, and she felt that bolt of red hot destruction in her blood, her fingers curling on their own accord as she imagined tangling the woman's brown strands in her fist and tearing it from her scalp, blood and skin scattering, the wet soft sound of flesh pulling and ripping. 

Her mouth was twisting itself into a grin, and despite the rush of her heart in her ribs, she forced her expression back to passive and neutral. The build of excitement was too heady, too tempting, and squashing it was necessary. Running all the way back to the pantry, catching her prey off guard, it was exciting and dizzying but too simple. Too easy. Just another short-lived victory she didn’t need to waste her energy on. 

Breathe. Scrape her nails along the metal of the wall, feel the soft high grass crumple under her boot heel.  
Smell the smoke. 

There. The breath pushed out of her lungs slowly, a thin warm rush over her chapped lips, and she smiled. 

The buzz under her skin remained, the want to curl her hands into claws and rend and shred, to pull the bulky steel knife from her waist and sink it through skin and bone. But the thrumming pulse of its insistence eased, and she continued her walk along the wall's border. Cutting through yards and stepping around tripping hazards she paced the outlier, trailing her fingers along the rough-hewn surface until they were dark with grit and rust. 

It was almost meditative, if not for the sense of being a rat in a cage, caught behind opaque walls and never knowing what lurked only inches away in the unknown. She could almost appreciate the irony; travelling as far as she did, every sleepless night and bloody blister, all leading her back to her people. And as soon as she found them? She was bored of it. Caged and frustrated, boxed in and angry. 

She was just so goddamn angry. 

Craning her neck, she looked up and squinted at the highest point of the wall. High for sure, but no sky scraper. Impressive from the ground but ultimately insignificant in the grand scope of the world. To the fallen cities across the country, the globe, just one little wall was nothing. It could come down easily. 

She pushed her full palm against the metal, and wondered if on the other side there was a walker doing the same. What had once been a girl like her, turned grey and mottled with gore and ichor, the sagging parchment thin flesh falling away from delicate bones, the thin wisps of blonde hair stringy and fraying away from a sun-bleached scalp. 

There were monsters hiding in the dark and she envied their freedom. 

A rustle of clothing. The crunch of gravel under rubber soles. For a second Beth could imagine her dead twin on the other side, rotten mouth gaping as she clawed at the metal, desperate and longing to cross the barrier and sate her hunger. 

"Beth?" 

She barely resisted a sigh. Not her imagined doppelganger then. Letting her palm slide away from the steel panel she turned carefully, hair tickling her neck and throat as she settled passive eyes on her interruption. 

Sasha stood a few yards away, sniper rifle lifted and resting on her shoulder. Beth still didn’t know what had happened to the woman between the prison and now, couldn’t find it in herself to care, but whatever had happened hadn't been kind. There was a haunting in the dark brown of her eyes, a gauntness to her cheeks, and her mouth which had always offered such a dazzling smile was drawn into a thin pale line on her pretty face. They had barely spoken since her arrival, no more than sharing tight smiles and a loose hug. 

There was something familiar about the baggy army green jacket she wore that itched at Beth's memory, but she couldn't place it. 

As broken as she was, there was something about Sasha that made her think she might have broken too.  
Blinking, she turned and faced the woman properly. "Yeah?" 

Glancing between her and the wall, the older woman tilted her head speculatively. "Just checking to see if you're okay." She was hopelessly expressive, had been as long as Beth knew her, and even her words belied the cautious confusion that had over taken her. "Was on my way back from watch and saw you having a moment with the wall. Thought I might see if you were alright." 

The teasing smile she attempted was so thin and brittle that Beth wondered how her face didn’t crack along with it. 

Head cocking in deliberate mirror of the other woman's stance, Beth smiled. Just as thin, but instead of fragile china it was smoke, neither here nor there and anchor-less. "Oh, I'm fine. Was getting a headache and thought maybe a walk would help." She cut a glance at the wall, her heartbeat in her palms. "Curiosity got a hold of me, though. Just had to... y'know. Really stop an' look." 

Sasha's brows pinched and her lips fell back into that tight line, but a moment later she sighed and the harshness momentarily left. For a second, whatever burden she carried lifted and she almost looked soft again. 

Beth thought she was prettier when she looked ready to shatter apart. 

"The walls are strong," she said firmly, like it was a promise. "We walked every inch of them as soon as we settled in. No weak spots, no bad surprises." Her weight shifted, one hip starting to cock out before she caught herself and widened her stance, as though she was preparing to be knocked over at any moment.

"After everything that's happened, I understand. But those walls? They aren't what we need to worry about now." 

Beth's smile froze and then stretched. She could hear the whisper of the wind in the trees and the far off bark of a dog, but the little bubble they were in was still and muffled. She reckoned her smile must be wrong, maybe too many teeth or not enough, but even as the frown lines between the older woman's brow dug in deep she didn’t look away. 

"What do we need to worry about?" She asked lightly, taking extra care to make her voice as earnest as she could remember ever being. 

Her question was met with hesitation, but only briefly. Sasha's attention jumped between her smile, the wall, and the shiny puckered scar on her forehead before she rolled her shoulders and breathed, the dark lines finally fading away and leaving her skin smooth. 

"We're still working on that." She said cryptically, but her eyes flashed both soft and hard. "But you'll know. As soon as we know? You'll know. Just keep an eye out, okay? Anything sounds weird, anything feels weird, you go straight to Rick or Maggie. Nothing's getting the jump on us again." 

Beth couldn't think of an emptier promise. There was always something. Some new threat, the next great evil, the knife in the back as soon as they were complacent in their safety. If it wasn't the walkers picking them off one at a time, it would eventually be the lusting greed of men, come to take everything they had and leave slaughter in their wake. 

The sun glinting on a sword's edge flashed through her mind. Blood soaking into a worn shirt collar. A child's bloody shoe, a woman's corpse desecrated and treated as an ornament. 

A car on a dark road. 

Wetting her lips, she nearly sighed when the taste of ash calmed her suddenly racing heart. 

"Of course." She promised, dutifully aware that they were both liars. Sasha's broken edges told the truth for her. Someone would always get the jump on them, someone would always die, but still their lips formed hollow words of assurance and valor. 

There was no winning. No being ready. Just surviving by whatever means until the weak fell and the strong limped away to lick their wounds. 

Another long look. The other woman was lingering, speculation and hesitation making her move stiffly. 

Irritation threatened to bloom, and Beth squashed it down and gave the woman a slight smile. No teeth, just thin lips stretching taut and dry, and her cheeks ached with the falsehood of it. There was an itch in her head, a soft murmur asking why she even bothered with the phony smiles and too wide eyes, and she could imagine waving her hand to shoo the voice away. 

They were messes. Barely holding themselves together, frayed and shredding like old rag-dolls relying on the strength of a few threads before falling apart entirely. She was angry, resentful, even disgusted. Weakness shone through the cracks in their armors, tempting anyone who saw to dig their fingers in and pull until their hearts were there to see. It would be so easy to exploit it, to be cruel and lash out and teach them all a lesson, teach them to keep it locked away and never be seen. 

But they were her family. And under the temptations that made her reach to cradle her hunting knife, there was also that primal recognition. Possession. Territory. Almost pity. She could tape those cracks up and try to teach them, or she could be the one to slip her knife tip in and pry them apart. 

She liked both options. But it was only fair that the smallest kindness she could offer was to pretend. If only for as far as they were willing to be ignorant. 

After that, it was all up to them. 

"Right," Sasha finally said when the moment had stretched too long. Her shoulders were tense, and the lines were digging deeply in between her brows. Beth didn't miss how her grip on the gun tightened for a split second, and gave into the impulse to stretch her smile into a proper grin. 

Maybe the really broken ones weren't as ignorant as the rest. It almost made her feel fond. 

"Just... take it easy." Sasha continued, taking a deliberate step backwards. "Keep your eyes open. Talk to Maggie, too. I know she's... she's not worried per se, but she wishes you'd talk to her more. She's missed you. We all have, but Maggie..." Her voice strained, and Beth ran a quick headcount in her mind. She hadn't been looking for Tyreese, but Sasha's cold fragility suddenly made a bit more sense when she noted his absence. "Maggie really needed this. Needed you." 

"I will," she promised. It felt like a lie, but she would. She'd talk. 

She just doubted Maggie really wanted to hear anything she had to say. 

With a single nod, Sasha parted her one last look before turning heel and striding away. Her shoulders were still tense, her head dipped down, and Beth knew she wasn't imagining it when she guessed that the woman was resisting the urge to look over her should as she left. 

Even if she didn't really know, she still knew she didn’t want to be followed. 

Beaming a painful grin at the parting woman's back, Beth decided that she was feeling fond after all. 

 

***** 

 

For how effortlessly he had been avoiding her, it was almost funny how easily she stumbled upon his hiding spot. 

After Sasha left, she had continued her slow walk along the wall. Her fingertips were black with grime and her head was finally building up a steady throb after so much time in the sunshine, but she walked with a buzz under her skin and a half-forgotten song hummed in her throat. The further away she got from the populated houses the quieter it got, the longer the grass was, and if it hadn't been for the steel under her hand she could have imagined it was the same as any ghost town out in the world. 

Then of course, a cough, and her head snapped to find the suspect. 

Behind one of the smaller, unoccupied homes with a large backyard was a copse of small apple trees. Bees and flies buzzed around some of the over ripe fruit that had hit the grass, and the branches were thicker and fuller than a productive tree should be. A whisper that sounded like her daddy's voice said it was in dire need of thinning, that if they were smart they'd trim it up for a better yielding crop. 

The trees weren't the issue, and she shook her father's ghost away. 

Daryl was smoking under the center tree. It was still young, not nearly old enough to shield his bulk, but he was sitting against the thin trunk with his knees to his chest as he inhaled smoke, and even though he was too far away for her to see his eyes, she knew he had seen her too. 

All at once everything was very still, but the drum of her heart beat out a vicious rhythm. 

Since that first day he had been absent. Slinking silently away every time she rounded a corner, curiously missing from every meal. Where he slept she didn't know, or when he ate, but she would see the shape of his shoulders or the dark shock of his hair, and he would be gone before she could blink. 

She wondered if he could teach her to be invisible as well. 

Electricity sparked and popped under her skin, and without thinking she walked towards him. 

Up close he was unnaturally still. Despite his loose limbs and the curling smoke from the cigarette between his fingers, he held the stance of a rabbit in the bush just waiting for a fox to pass, and under her breast heat bloomed and spread, making her ache with something hungry and proud. 

He was so afraid of her, and it was beautiful. 

_Don't you think that's beautiful?_

"Was starting to think I'd imagined you," she said lightly, standing just a few short feet outside of his personal bubble. Her limbs felt like they were about ready to shake with her want to reach and touch, to clasp her hands around his wrists and feel the heat pulse away in his veins. "What with how you're always disappearin''." 

Bringing the cigarette back to his lips was a blatant stall for time, but she didn’t care. Not with how his chapped lips pursed around the filter, of the way his eyes couldn’t seem to decide where to land. Staring hard at her, turning to the ground, carefully studying his own scarred knuckles. A one shoulder shrug in a clear non-answer as he held the smoke in his lungs, and a moment later, his chin dipping back and a smoke ring flowing from his opened mouth. Dully she remembered the prison, where he had performed that same trick well over a dozen times to the delight of children and the reproach of guardians. This was the first time she could recall that he didn't seem to take any kind of mischievous joy in it.

It stretched and grew in the air, and for the split second as it floated past his head, she saw it as a wavering grey halo. 

"Been busy," he grunted, and it was as much a lie as it was truth. He'd never lie boldly. He was too honest for that, too direct. But he could weave other truths in to fill the gaps, and use the deniability to bolster his unease. Flicking ash, he looked uncomfortable, caught with no way to escape without it being regarded as one. 

"I've missed you," she said, going for the jugular. She couldn't miss the flicker of shame that ran through him, or how his fingers fidgeted before taking another drag. 

Silence. Just the trees and the buzz of insect wings as he sat and smoked, and she waited. 

This. This is why her patience was so important. 

"Yeah," he said a minute later, avoiding her eyes. "Yeah. I uh. I missed you too." 

His voice was scratchy, and his posture uncomfortable. But the blunt honesty in the words, so stilted as if saying them felt unnatural, wasn't lost on her. She doubted she imagined that the scruff of his chin had more grey threaded through since she had last saw him, or how just as Sasha he was made of broken, raw edges. He was breaking too, had been for longer than she had probably been alive, but he was too stubborn, too strong, to let himself break fully. 

She wondered if she could break him. 

She imagined she probably could. 

"We should talk," she whispered, heat building and pulsing despite her soft words. What it was about him she wasn't sure, but she wanted to break him apart and build him up again, find all of those frayed edges and pick at the threads until he came unwound. 

Rip him open. 

"But not like this." She amended, when he looked trapped and tense, like a dog waiting for a kick. It was just one more kindness she could offer on top of her fake smiles and feigned cheer. It was one thing to push when he needed it, but she needed him to come to her, needed him to not flee at every opportunity. 

If that meant giving him an illusion of control, then she would. 

"I know you. I know how you think. But I'm here. I came back. And when you're ready, come talk to me. I think you know we need to as much as I do." 

A stiff nod. Silence. A burning filter getting flicked away into the tall, moist grass. 

Before a minute could even pass, he was heaving up onto his feet and standing to tower over her again. Her belly churned and squirmed as she took in his height, his broad shoulders, the way he was already withdrawing to hide behind his greasy bangs. 

He looked like he'd been through hell and would be again soon. 

"Yeah," he agreed gruffly. He hesitated, hands landing on his hips, then his pockets, and giving away his apprehension as they fluttered uselessly at his sides. It took more self-control than she knew she had to not grin widely at the sight, to not bare her teeth and gums before reaching to fist his shirt and bury herself in him. "We'll talk," he promised. Eyes raising to meet hers, the blue was lost in the shadows of his eyes and looked dark and grey. But when Daryl Dixon made a promise, it was always made to be kept. 

"I'll uh. I'll come get you soon, a'right? Just. I gotta do some things first." He was already pulling away, hasty in his retreat, eager to find some new place of silence and solitude. But before he left, he hesitated and glanced back at her once more. 

"You're okay, ain't ya?" He asked, gruff but soft, and for the first time she heard his trepidation. He sounded like a little boy ready for bad news, that Christmas wasn't coming this year, that the dog had been hit by a car. (She also knew that he had never had any of those things, and she wondered what bad news would have meant to a boy like that.) He was the first person to ask that without looking to her scar immediately after. 

It made her want to bury her hands in his flesh and sing. 

"Yeah, I'm okay." She assured him with a smile. Just like him, it was the trading of one truth for another. A game of verbal slight-of-hand. She was alive, she was a survivor, she was strong. That meant she was okay. 

She was also broken, and by no means the girl he thought he was asking that question. 

But with a nod he accepted it, too earnest to believe and too eager to get away. Maybe if he had taken the time to really look, to really see her, he would have seen past her sweetheart face and seen the break in her. 

Maybe if he had stepped closer he'd have wondered why they both smelled of smoke and ash. 

But he was troubled and gun-shy, and observant or not he couldn’t see what he wouldn’t turn to look at. 

Without even a parting comment he merely nodded and strode away, long legs carrying him quickly through the grass and away from her. Whatever disappointment she felt though was livable, and there was no rage to be found in his retreat. They would talk, and he kept his promises. She would get him alone, get close enough into his space to touch and feel and anchor herself, and the steady building throb of _something_ in her gut that burned so hot and bright would be satisfied. 

Her lips were still dry, and pressing her dirty fingertips to the rough skin, she wondered if his chapped lips were the same texture. 

She wondered how they would feel on hers. 

Hand fiddling with the bulky knife at her belt, she wondered how sharp she could get it. Of how easily it might cut open his sternum so she could see and hold and cherish his broken heart. 

She could live inside him. And with enough coaxing, she was almost sure he would be eager to live inside her as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The titles of this story and the chapter were inspired by the Kurt Vile song "Smoke Ring for My Halo". Have questions or comments? Please leave them below.
> 
> Feel free to visit me on tumblr at statueofsirens.


	2. Right under the roof of your house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I wasn't resurrected." Beth said bluntly, inflecting her voice just enough to ease the harsh words with girlish sweetness. "I was never dead."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented, subscribed, bookmarked, and kudos'd the first chapter! Updates may be somewhat irregular because I am writing this as I go, but expect the average to be one-two weeks between new chapters.
> 
> All previous warnings still apply. As of right now we're taking a slightly more slow-burned pace than I expected, but as I warned before be prepared for: graphic descriptions of violence, disturbing and violent sexual imagery, and unhealthy relationship dynamics. 
> 
> As always, please comment. <3

In Alexandra, time ticked by slowly. 

The days came and went, but each hour and minute was drawn and stretched until it was unrecognizable. Out on the road, each moment of sunlight was useful. There was always a purpose, a need, and dawn would race to sunset until every minute had been filled to its potential. 

Inside the walls, time was taken for granted. There was no victory in spending each second that passed alive. There was time to waste, time to gossip, time to sit idle and restless until the jangle of nerves demanded that limbs move and _do_ something. 

Patience was a steady chant in her head, but patience was so unfair when time kept changing pace. 

Poking at her bowl of hot cereal, Beth wondered how her family could fall into such a sand-trap. Despite the doubts she saw clinging to their nerves, she also saw their desperation. Tension weighed at everyone's shoulders, but more than that, there was a pitiful neediness. They swaddled themselves in ignorance, pretending to keep up the fight even as they slowly burned away the wildness they had accumulated out on the road. 

It was like they were stepping backward in time, retreating into their weaker selves, and she hated it. 

"Best eat up, Bethy." Maggie chastised in passing. She brushed by behind Beth's chair, a warm hand finding her shoulder to give an affectionate squeeze. "Let it sit too long and someone might start eyeing it for themselves.' 

Beth suppressed a twitch, and forced herself to take a bite of the plain cooked oats. It was dry and pasty, and stuck to her cheeks when she tried to swallow. "That your way of sayin' you're hungry?" 

Maggie snorted, already rifling through the kitchen in search of the boxes of teas that Carol kept stocked. Despite having two homes at their disposal, the family still came together at most mealtimes, and Beth hadn't missed how Rick would seem to take a headcount with his eyes during every meal. 

"I guilted a power bar off of Glenn this mornin'," her sister said wryly, stirring warm water into her mug and adding a tea-bag. "Besides, I wouldn't want to spoil my appetite. Not with how proud Daryl was of those skunks he dragged in last night." 

Pressing shapes into the lumpy mess in her bowl, Beth tried to ignore the way her heart leapt and drummed. Since catching him by the apple trees, Daryl had continued to make himself scarce, and she had only caught glimpses of him in passing. He was no longer hiding from her, but his reticence was clear, and he never strayed too close before finding something else to distract him from her tracking eyes. A hunger in her churned and throbbed every time he disappeared, and more than once she had considered going against her word and finding him. She still didn't know where he slept, even if he slept at all, but nearly every night she had laid still alert in the early hours wondering where she could trap him and cage him in. 

She knew it wouldn't be long before he came to her. And each day that she was stuck waiting was an exquisite and enraging torture. 

"Never would have thought you'd be so excited for skunk." She said idly, carefully turning to regard her sister, another spoonful of oats balanced on her spoon. 

Maggie laughed into her mug, a tired but relaxed smile pulling at her lips. She looked so comfortable, so happy, and Beth ached with her own frustration. How her sister could smile like that and it have no trembling edges was lost to her now, and she wanted nothing more than to see the adrenaline flood her sister's eyes. 

"Don't get me wrong, I don’t think I'll ever be over joyed to be eating Pepé Le Pew. But food is food, and its better than chicken from a can. Besides, we can afford to get fancy with it now. I heard Carol joking about something she called skunk a la king." 

"We don't have any cream." Beth cut in, a smile cutting across her lips when Maggie looked to her. 

The mug was poised close to her mouth, just barely steaming, and the sweet smell was heavy and cloying. The older sister seemed to wobble between taking a sip and answering, and a second later, she huffed out a shallow laugh. "Fine then, smart ass. We can have... skunk picatta." 

Beth's grin stretched wider. All gum and teeth, the sticky porridge in her bowl forgotten as she watched the confusion bloom across Maggie's face. Not concerned, not yet. Too hopeful for that. Too happy to be one of the Greene girls and not the last of her family name. "No lemons." 

Fiddling with the coffee mug, the older woman's attention darted between her smile and the ring of scar tissue above her brow. Gripping the spoon more tightly, Beth wondered what would happen if she plunged it into her sister's eye. She imagined it'd be easy, just scoop it in and pluck it out. Watch her scream and bleed, see if Glenn would find his wife quite as pretty with a gaping hole in her face. Beth thought it would suit her. They were all scarred in some way, hard living and survival etched into their skin, and Maggie was no different. But survival hid beauty in its ugliness, and she couldn’t help but think how much prettier her big sister could be if she had her own scars to wear. 

She could give the eye to Carl. He'd might find the joke funny if she spun it the right way. 

With a huff, Maggie broke and sipped her tea. "Funny. So I guess Pepé is just going to have to slum it, seein' as how we can't even send him to the table in style." 

"What's wrong with slumming it?" She questioned, head tilting and smile frozen. Her entire face felt like it could crack, like her skin was drying and pulling tight, but she couldn't stop. It didn't feel right, she knew it didn't look right, but as long as they watched her lips and teeth they ignored everything else. For how long she didn't know, she was amazed she had gotten this far, but somehow no one would just come out and say it. Say she was wrong, she wasn't right, these pretty lies they were telling each other were founded in broken promises and unrealistic dreams. 

They were so desperate to have her that they weren't even seeing her. 

Her grip tightened. She wondered how fast she'd have to move to get Maggie pinned so she could take that eye. 

"Nothing is," Maggie said softly, her sadness creeping back into her edges, and Beth's fingers relaxed their grip. "It's just that we don’t have to now. Not all of the time, anyway. I know out there we learned to go without. To eat what we could, when we could, no matter what it tasted like. But we don't have to anymore. We can make things a little nicer. Dress it up a little. Have a fun dinner." She gave Beth a look that was so soft, so yearning, that it made the restless buzz under her skin light up like neon. Love was tangled in sadness, driven by longing. "Getting' you back reminded us we could have that again. We can actually sit down and live, not just get by. We came close to forgetting that." 

Beth couldn't stand to see that look on Maggie's face. The vulnerability in it was damning, and something painful fluttered under her ribs, something dark tangled and twisted in her gut. Her smile slowly faded, her sore jaw muscles twinging and pulling, and she turned her eyes back down to her breakfast. 

Whatever appetite she'd had was long gone. 

"'Sides," Maggie finally said, to fill the silence. There was forced cheer in her voice, and Beth listened to the ceramic of her mug clinking on the counter-top. "Daryl bet Carol she couldn't make nothing fancy outta some old skunks. With him throwin' the glove down like that, she's a woman on a mission." 

Nodding she poked and prodded at her bowl, ready to let the words hang and die in the air. The open sunlit space of the kitchen was suddenly stifling and claustrophobic, and she wanted out. She wanted to run somewhere, hunt something. She wanted to set fires and watch them burn, feel her knife pierce and cut, wanted to feel the rush of victory and ownership as it raced through her blood. 

Under the crisp smell of household cleaner, she could still smell smoke. She could feel ash gritty and bitter on her teeth. 

Maggie hovered, waiting for some reaction, until Beth heard her sigh. "I'm going down to the gate. Rick's pulling a few of us together to mock up a new scavenger route for runs, and he'll need someone who knows sassafras from sorghum to help with the lists. I'll be down at the gardens later if you want to keep me company." 

They both knew she didn't, and like tasting a bitter pill Beth realized what she felt was not just anger or frustration, but pity. 

Taking a halting breath, she wetted her lips and chewed her cheek, trying to decide if she should speak. She was already paying them all as much kindness as she could, and yet another felt like a thankless gift. But as Maggie brushed past her once again, she felt that stuttering flutter beneath her breast, and her mouth fell open. 

"Hey, Maggie." Her heart was drumming a staccato rhythm and laying her palms flat, her nails dragged against the table's surface. "There's some canned mushrooms back at the pantry. And I know Olivia has a little wine rationed and tucked away, if someone wanted to go sweet talk her." 

She didn't have to look to see Maggie's smile. Fragile as a reed and clear as a church bell, it was in her voice. "Mom's chicken marsala." 

Her fingers flexed and arched, her nails clawing in to the wood and leaving a sharp throb in her nail-beds. "Yeah. You reckon Carol could win the bet if she had a plate of that to put on the table?" 

Maggie hummed in thought. "I reckon she might," she said, her tone soft. Carefully optimistic. "The way I see it, we'd all be winning." 

Beth gave a short nod, her eyes boring into the table. Her nerves were popping and twitching with misfiring signals, her toes curling, and her breath had caught in her chest. Her diaphragm ached, and with each hard pulse of her heart she dug her nails harder into the wood. Forcing her head to turn, she met her sister's eyes and finely carved out a new smile for her face. Like un-kilned clay it felt jagged and malformed, likely to flake and dig fissures into the flesh of her face, but she still received a wobbling smile in return. 

"I'll let Carol know," Maggie promised. "Thanks, honey." 

"Of course," she said, turning away. Her nails had gone white with pressure, and the pain radiating from her cuticle up to the second knuckle made it easier to breathe. "See you later, Mags." 

"See you," Maggie murmured, and a moment later Beth heard the soft click of her boot soles against the hard wood. 

Straining her ears, she followed the steps through the house, breath held and poised until she heard the faint sound of the front door opening and closing, and only then did she release her hold on the table top. Her heart was restless and drumming, her fingers ached, and with a heaving breath she swallowed unsteadily. 

Listening over the dull buzz of the refrigerator, she was satisfied to hear no other movement in the house. She was finally alone. 

Teeth gritting, she picked up the small breakfast bowl, the surface long gone cold, and smashed it against the table. Over and over, until the finely lacquered finish was dull and scratched, and all that remained in her hands were shattered pieces of blue stained ceramic. Sharp splinters hooked and caught in her skin, wriggling in and welling up pin-pricks of shiny red blood. Staring down at the mess she had made, she huffed out a bitter laugh and smiled. 

It was her first smile of the day that didn't ring false.

  
  


*****

Of all the strays her family had picked up along the way, Beth's favorite was Father Gabriel.

Perhaps favorite was a strong word. He was not the kind of man she felt the need to seek out and befriend, or even speak to. The old her, the girl who had been sweet and whole, likely would have clung to his offers of gospel and prayer. Her father had been a religious man, and her mother a proper Christian, so it would have made sense to see this man of God and want to seek his counsel. To take comfort in his scripture and promises of salvation. To forget her fear, for a few minutes or an hour, and instead get lost in the warm comfort of the Lord's wisdom and love. Lost as they all were, the old her would have seen the preacher as a gift, and would have taken him for granted as a symbol of hope. 

Hope was a fleeting and useless expense of energy now. 

So, no. That wasn't why he was her favorite. 

It was the fact that she could see the fear rotting him from the inside out, and yet he still played pied piper for the small broken congregation. His position in the group was precarious and wavering, some meeting his eye with a smile and other's looking through him with distrust. Behind the crisp white collar was a social leper with a kind smile, whose fear and the plea for absolution bled from his pores. 

He was so incredibly weak, but he wrapped that weakness in a cloak of shame, and wore it without protest under the stares of the others. Tension thick as a fog smothered every room he took up space in, but he did not flinch away from it. He stood, still and steady in his own repugnance, and accepted it without question. What he had done to earn the judgmental disdain she didn't know, nor did she know why he bore it so silently. For every twitch of frustration he caved and showed, a moment later there would be peaceful resilience. Acceptance. 

A coward in a preacher's collar who had mounted himself on a marble pillar of self-loathing and understanding. 

He was fascinating. 

When the time was permitted, she liked to sit in his church and watch. It had taken a couple of visits for him to understand she was not there to talk to him, or to kneel at the alter. She had no desire to join him in prayer, to take communion, or to offer her confessions. She enjoyed sitting and watching, to see how tension would tighten his shoulders and retreat, like tides on a shore, as he accepted her watchful eye. She imagined he thought her shy, or silent in her prayers, but his anxiety spoke for itself. 

Of the two of them, they both knew she was not the one seeking forgiveness. 

Today was no different. He stood at his podium, dress shirt damp with sweat but as starched and pressed as appearances demanded, and marked notes as he read from the tattered bible he held at hand. The minutes ticked by silently except for the soft shuffle of paper, the odd creak of the building settling around them. But like clockwork, every few minutes his throat would clear and his eyes would lift and meet her own, wariness giving way to concession as he accepted her appraisal. 

They had fallen into this pattern enough times now that her surprise out-weighed her irritation when he spoke. 

"Did you know," the priest suddenly said, hands fidgeting with the thin bible pages. "That after Christ resurrected Lazarus, the chief priests of Bethany considered having him put to death?" He paused and cleared his throat. "Lazarus, I mean. See, though it was a miracle, and praised by Jesus's followers, there was still judgment. And for many different reasons. Those who conspired against Christ, wished Lazarus be put to death because he inspired the people to believe. Even though he was walking proof of God's blessings, some saw his resurrection as unnatural. And some of those who doubted that Jesus was Christ believed that his miracle had actually gone against the will of God. By their logic, they saw Lazarus's miracle to be blasphemous." 

Blinking slowly, Beth waited for him to get to the point. 

"When most people refer to Lazarus, they only address his resurrection." He continued, sweat glistening on the smooth skin of his bare scalp. Nerves rolled off of him in waves, but his tone was conversational. "Very rarely does anyone question the life he lived afterwards." 

Setting the bible down and smoothing his hands down the cover, he stepped away from the podium, and took one determined step her direction. 

"I was there when they went for you." He said, his dark eyes kind and earnest. "Afterwards I saw... their grief. The way that they almost fell apart and withered after. Losing you shook their faith. Not in God, perhaps, but in life. At first, I thought maybe it was that you were so young. Innocence is precious in a world like this. But it was... I'm not sure what it was. It was like their hope died with you. And then, months later, a miracle. That gate opened, and like Christ calling for the stone of Lazarus's tomb to be rolled away, you walked through." 

Hesitating, he looked to her in expectation. 

"I wasn't resurrected." Beth said bluntly, inflecting her voice just enough to ease the harsh words with girlish sweetness. "I was never dead." 

"A miracle itself, then. After all, the only resurrections we see these days are not what anyone could call a blessing." A humorless smile, and then an awkward fiddle of his hands. "That makes your survival no less miraculous." Gabriel insisted, seemingly hitting his stride. There was still a heavy tension lingering, anxiety seemed to cling to him as easily as his sweat dampened shirt. But his words were picking up speed, and even hidden behind dullness and smoke Beth could see how impassioned he was. 

"Lazarus was blessed with a miracle, but even miracles are trials themselves." He reasoned, stepping closer. "Lazarus spent four days in death, but then went home to his sisters and his former life. But he would always be a changed man, and never be seen as the man he was before his death. Anyone who knew him would see him as a miracle, or unnatural. Either way, his trial was to live a new life, different from the one he had left behind in death. One with new blessings and new risks." 

"You think God is testing me," she assessed, nose wrinkling at the implication. 

"I think God is testing all of us." Gabriel corrected, wringing his hands and taking the last few steps before sinking to sit on a pew a few feet away. "Every moment, of every day. Whether you see this as the end times or not, the fact is that we're all being tested. Our sins are not absolved because we're struggling to survive. Mankind has struggled since Adam and Eve were cast from Eden. It is our lot in life to sin and seek forgiveness. What I'm saying is, is that you were given a miracle. You survived the impossible and found your way. That was a gift, not only to you, but to them as well. But now the real trial begins. And that trial is life." 

Something dark and ugly twisted in Beth's belly, snaking up into her chest and squeezing hard at her thumping heart. "What are you sayin'? God took pity on me, but now my life is going to be even harder than it was? When it was already going so easy?" 

Gabriel's lips quirked. "It means whatever challenges you faced before, you have more now. Because you'll have to live with new expectations. The thoughts and opinions of others will carry new weight. You'll be someone's miracle. You'll be someone's nightmare. It doesn't sound fair, Beth. I know it doesn't. But it is a gift, however it plays out. It just means that no matter what, you can't go back. Like Lazarus, this is your trial. This is who you are now." 

Brow wrinkling, Beth considered that. The unsettled writhing in her gut eased to an uncomfortable wiggle, and cocking her head she mulled over the preacher's words. Something niggled at the back of her head, something that smelled like smoke and burned like moonshine. 

_You got to stay who you are, not who you were._

Blinking, she glanced back to the man who was watching her patiently, his eyes always a little too wide and keen. "What if I don’t want to go back?" She asked, palms itching until she rubbed them across the denim of her jeans. There were small scabs in the webbing of her fingers left over from breakfast, and they caught and stung as she pushed at the fabric. Something like excitement was pooling into her veins, and she had the sudden desire to hold her knife in her hand. "What if I leave that girl behind? Is it still a trial?" 

"Yes," Gabriel nodded. "Because while you leave her behind, there will be others who haven't. Change is painful. Changing the way you think and see the world, and each other, is painful. You will have to bear that as they learn to accept you. The new you. But God trusted you with this. He believes in you, in what you can handle, and that's why you're here now. As you are, not as you were. That is your gift and your hardship. But with it, is God's blessing. Whether or not you have faith in him, he has faith in you." 

Beth hummed. "You're right," she agreed softly. "But they want that girl. I can't be her anymore, not the way they want me to be." 

"And they will share your trial," he assured, reaching out and then second guessing it. Quickly, he pulled the hand back to his lap. "We're all being tested. If I had known you before, I would have been tested as well. You and I have a clean slate. But your sister, your friends, they will be. You will test each other. But this is ultimately about you. The stone has already been rolled away, and we can't go back now." 

Meeting his eyes, Beth raised her chin and considered his words. She doubted he knew what he was saying, or that he would have opened his mouth if he could see what was inside her. But no matter how broken she was, how angry and hungry she was, there was something soothing about the priest's words. 

He was right after all. She couldn’t go back. 

"Thank you." She said, giving him one firm nod before rising from her seat. His answering smile was handsome and boyish, and even hidden under tangled web of anger and longing in her chest, she felt a small spark of what could be affection. He was pitiful, almost distastefully so, but something about him made her think that he might have potential. She tried to imagine him with scabbed knuckles and swollen bruises, how his hands might shake under the weight of a sharp blade if she pushed it into his hands. Glancing at the crisp white of his holy collar, she thought of how much more honest it would be speckled with blood. 

Blanketed in his candid contrition and fear, he was perhaps the second most honest person within the walls. 

She was still waiting on the first. 

"Have a good day, Father." Patting him on the shoulder, she brushed past him to leave. 

"Oh, and Beth?" He suddenly called, standing to catch her attention. Pausing near the door, she turned to regard him from over her shoulder. "Thank you for listening. And for your visits. Despite the silence, I rather enjoy the company." 

Given the way he would twitch and fidget, she wondered how that could be. Regardless, she rewarded his admission with a thin smile. "I'm glad." The words rang tinny and hollow to her own ears, but his smile only widened and grew more confident. Amused, she resolved to continue her visits. "See you around." 

Stepping out of the stale air of the church and into the sunshine, she breathed in deeply and realized with sudden clarity that he had never asked her if she was okay. For the first time, someone had simply assumed that in some measure, she must be. Exhaling the smoke from her lungs she shook her head and grinned.

  
  


*****

Olivia was infinitely more tolerable when she was out of sight.

It wasn't the older woman's fault, but her every move was a distraction. Try as she might, Beth couldn't help but have her focus linger on the woman for minutes at a time. Checking her heavy breathing when something winded her, eyeing the sheen of sweat at her temples when the humidity got to be too much. The constant itch of wanting to reach out and grab at clothing, hair, skin and tear and rip at it was exhausting. 

Thankfully Olivia seemed just as happy to be away from her. 

For the last hour Beth had been measuring and bagging various dry good into different bags and containers. It was tedious work at best. Breaking heavy bags of flour and sugar into smaller bags and labeling them, separating the corn starch from the baking soda, trying to stretch out small bags of brown sugar into has many sandwich bags as she could. Dull and methodical, it was soothing in a way that reminded her of cleaning a gun. Just jumbled pieces being stripped apart and put back together, one after another, allowing her mind to turn foggy and light. 

"Knock-knock," a voice called, and her head snapped up. A moment later Glenn appeared in the doorway, a burlap shopping bag slung over the crook of one elbow and a bundle of wax paper in the other. "I heard you were back here helping with... running some kind of drug operation?" He blinked and surveyed her table top, lined with various piles of white powders sorted into baggies and labeled with marker. "Huh." 

Beth plucked up a small parcel of baking soda and jiggled it enticingly. "The first hit is free?" She said plainly, arching an eyebrow. 

"Don't make me get your sister," Glenn said, trying to look stern and failing miserably. "I always hated being a tattletale." 

"Snitches get stitches," she quipped sweetly, dropping the baggie back onto the table. Meticulous as she had been up until now, her work station was still a mess of supplies, and everything within reach had a thin dusting of obscure powders on the surface. Her skin itched from elbow to fingertip, and the small scabs on her fingers and palms burned and stung. Something about the discomfort made it easier to breathe in the small backroom of the pantry. 

"Oh my god, _stop_." He groaned. "Those words and your mouth do not work. It's like Barbie somehow ended up in Grand Theft Auto." Pausing, he shifted his feet restlessly. "That's a-" 

"Video game." She interrupted. Cocking her head, she regarded him from across her work space. "I know, Glenn. I was in high school before everything. I know what video games are." 

"Yeah, I know. Sorry." Leaning against the doorjamb he shrugged and looked apologetic. "Anyways. I got volunteered with grabbing a few things for dinner tonight, and figured I'd see if I could spring you for lunch." Juggling his arm load, she could hear the tinkling sound of glass in the shopping bag, and she could already imagine the wine miniatures that were squirreled away inside. Holding up the wad of wrapped wax paper, he wiggled it proudly. "Wanna take a break? I brought sandwiches. Sorta." 

Committing herself to another session of playing make believe didn’t sound appetizing, particularly after breakfast that morning, and she frowned down at her collection of measuring cups and ingredients. "I still have a lot of work to finish up." 

Glenn's shoulders had only begun to slump before another body was jostling into the doorway. 

"You've done plenty so far," Olivia interrupted, her plump frame nearly blocking Glenn from sight. Beth had the sudden realization that the woman had likely been listening in, and a hot spark of irritation flashed hot and heavy in her chest. "I already have all the afternoon counts finished. Why don’t you go outside and get some air?" The suggestion was followed with a shaky smile and a shooing hand before she glanced over her shoulder at Glenn. He met her eyes with a minute nod, and with that she shuffled back out of the room, nearly bumping into Glenn, and back to eavesdropping out of sight. 

It felt like a set up, and it didn't take much for Beth to think that the woman was eager to get rid of her for a bit. Unlike her family, it seemed the doleful little sheep could smell a wolf a mile away. 

Fine. She didn't want to be here anyway. 

"Okay," she agreed, standing and wiping her hands on her jeans. "But only because y'all had to twist my arm about it." 

"Hey, this was minimal arm twisting." Her brother in law protested, already perking up. "This is bribing at best. Sandwiches, remember?" 

"The 'sorta' that came attached wasn't really a selling point." Beth sassed under her breath, following him as he led her around the back door and out of the house. Olivia's house and pantry had an open backyard much like the other houses, but there was a small back patio that led into a side yard, and opened up onto one of the neighboring streets. It was open and sunny, and an inviting landscaping plan. 

It also invited too many wandering eyes, but Beth swallowed it down and took a seat on a nearby bench. Not a second later, Glenn was occupying the other side, his posture loose and comfortable. The shopping bag clinked and rattled when he set it between his feet, and a moment later he was unwrapping the wax paper package and handing her something that looked more like the loveless offspring of a burrito and a gyro than a sandwich. 

"It's not pretty," he agreed when he saw her face, but that didn’t stop him from eagerly picking up his own. "I think it's supposed to be flatbread? Carol was experimenting with acorns again. Michonne said something about gluten and textures and I kinda zoned out, but they still taste pretty good." 

Skeptical, Beth regarded the food for a moment, but after watching Glenn take an engulfing bite, nibbled on the edge. The texture was off, thin and somewhat crumbly, but the flavor was rich and nutty. Inside was some kind of seared meat and loose wild greens. Taking a larger bite, she hummed in surprise at the tanginess of the filling. 

"Rosita figured out we should be using the salad dressings for more stuff," Glenn told her around a mouthful, picking up on her questioning look. "Like, it's everywhere and that way we don't need to use up our salt and spices. So now the girls are putting it on everything. Marinade? Salad dressing. Sauce? Salad dressing. The oil and vinegar kinds, you know? They last forever. The cream stuff, not so much. Man," he suddenly sighed, staring wistfully out across the yard. "I miss ranch." 

"Ranch on pizza," she suddenly blurted out, surprising herself. 

Glenn groaned around a bite of his lunch in a way that would have made the old Beth blush. "Don't even start. I lived on that in college. Or, do you remember the dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets? Those with ranch and ketchup on white bread. The perfect game night sandwich." 

"That's disgustin'," she said, playing at prim and proper. Picking at the greens from her sandwich wrap, she pulled them out and munched on them. The sour bite of the salad dressing was sharpest there, and she relished the way it stung her tongue. 

"I never said it wasn't," he admitted with a shrug. "Honestly, I think college eating helped prepare me for this. If you can live on stale pizza and ramen noodles for two months, then surviving on canned beans and fire-roasted rodents isn’t so bad." 

Beth shot him a baleful look. "It ain't like we've been eating rats." 

"Nah, just their cousins." He said, knocking her shoulder with his. For a split second she considered slamming back into him, pushing him from the bench and using the surprise to pin his heavier frame with her own. His hair was longer now, just long enough for her fingers to tangle in it, and it'd be easy to beat his head against the ornate brick patio until he stopped moving. In her imagination she could hear the crack of his skull against the cinder-block, over and over until his head gaped and caved, his grey matter and blood spreading and splattering in a messy Rorschach that spoke of the beauty and vibrancy in their small, cruel world. 

Clenching her teeth, she picked at a piece of meat and forced herself to chew. "Squirrel is good when you get used to it." It was an oily meat, but plentiful. Out on her own, it had saved her from starving more than once, as well as her lessons on where to find their nests and how to find their food stashes. "And you love fresh rabbit." 

He sighed. "I do," he agreed. "And most of the time I don't even think about it anymore. I mean, we're having skunk for dinner tonight. I didn’t even blink when Maggie told me that. But every now and again I'll look and see a jar of Ragu or a box of taco shells and think 'Oh'. That used to be normal. And just like that I'll be reminded that just a few years ago eating Bambi's friends fresh from the woods would have seemed crazy." 

Beth thought of Daryl, sitting in the damp autumn leaves and eating mud snake as though it was as natural as breathing. 

"Only because you never had to." She said, forcing herself to take a proper bite, her nose wrinkling when the taste was suddenly dull and flat. It took a second, her memory of dark camps in the woods and tea candles burning in a dark kitchen almost distracting her from his tell-tale words. Blinking, her eyes narrowed and she glanced at him. 

"Wait, is that why you brought me lunch? Because of Maggie?" She asked, already knowing the answer by the guilty slope of his shoulders. There was no coincidence in him playing errand boy to his wife and his sudden desire to spend time with her. 

"She mentioned you'd be working," he hedged, clearly caught with his back to a corner and too terrible of a liar to backtrack out of it. "But lunch was my idea. You've been really quiet since you got here, and when you're with Maggie I don’t want to interrupt. I thought maybe we could, you know, have a little in-law bonding time." 

"Bullshit," Beth bit out, yet another meal forgotten in her distaste. "She sent you to spy on me. She doesn't trust me to be by myself." 

Glenn flinched and hung his head in exasperation. "I'm not spying," he insisted. "And I do want to spend time with you. I missed you. I thought you were gone. And now you're here, but you're always sneaking off to be alone, and we just want to be close to you again. Look, I know we'll never understand what happened in Atlanta. Or what happened after we thought you'd died. But you're here, and we want to be here with you. Is that so bad?" 

"It is if you're just sneaking around behind my back," she spit around a jagged smile. The twisting, tangling snakes in her belly were hissing and seething, wrapping around her lungs and heart and squeezing tight. She wanted to scream in Glenn's face, she wanted his nose smashed in against the concrete, she wanted to pull the heavy knife from her waist and slice it across the smooth flesh of his throat. "If she can't leave well enough alone and send you to play babysitter with me because she's too big a coward to do it herself." 

His head snapped up and his usual youthful smile was gone, replaced by a flat line. "Hey," he warned, sitting up straight and squaring his shoulders. "Look, we're trying okay? She's trying. She loves you Beth, but you won't talk to her. You won't talk to me. We just... you came home, but it doesn’t feel like you're really here yet." 

Shaking her head, she looked to the side and away from his stare. "I am here," she murmured. 

She just wasn't the girl they had wanted to come back. 

Gabriel was right. This was her trial. She could come back as she was, something broken and new, and it wouldn’t be enough. And even if they didn’t know it yet, they were starting to see the cracks in her. Whether they knew what it meant, she didn't know, but she doubted it. Glenn wouldn't be here if he could see inside her. If he really knew her for what she was, and not who she'd been. 

"Yeah, you are." He said softly, raising a hand to brush it over her hair and rest it on her shoulder with a squeeze. Unlike with Maggie her skin didn't crawl, but unlike with Daryl her blood didn’t singe and sing. Instead all she noted was the warmth of his olive skin where it bled through her blouse, and the weaving tangled pulse of snakes in her gut gave one wretched twist before settling to quietly wait. 

She wanted to hurt him, but bless his heart, she almost wished she could fix herself for him too. 

Unfortunately, Glenn wasn't broken enough for her to believe in him. His edges, despite everything that had happened, were still soft. 

He didn’t have Sasha's brittle smile, or Daryl's ragged seams. There was no hungry darkness twinkling in his eye the way it did for Rick, and even the smooth porcelain façade that Maggie wore had deep cracks in the painted finish. His kindness lingered, and his heart glowed warm and bright from beneath his breast. 

For his sake, she hoped that something broke it soon. He'd never last if it didn’t. 

She wished she loved him enough to break it for him, but she was selfish. She could only expend so much energy, waiting to see if she could be fixed, or to break another. And like a shadow lingering in her periphery, she knew that the only heart she wanted in her hands belonged to another. 

The anger retreated, and instead she felt sad. Glenn was family, kin by her sister's love and shared circumstance, but he wasn't her responsibility. 

Neither was she his. 

"Tell her I need time," she finally said, reaching to squeeze his fingers before brushing the hand off and away. "I don’t know how much. But crowding me is just making me angry. She knows better." 

"I'll try," he promised, running a hand through his hair and then down over his goatee. "She's stubborn, just like you. But yeah, I'll do my best. Even if you want space though, just... check in. A little bit here and there. Let us know that you’re around, even if you don’t want to talk. I'll do what I can and make sure everyone respects it." 

"Fine," she agreed, tired and impatient for the conversation to end. 

With a nod and a long-winded breath, Glenn scooped up to bag at his feet and stuffed the empty wrapper from their lunch into the bag. "I'm going to head off, then. And look, it was nice spending some time together, right? So if you don't mind, maybe I'll do it again later this week. We don't even have to talk. We can just sit and eat all awkward and quiet like it's the first day of a new school." 

Considering it for a moment, Beth gave a reluctant nod. 

His responding smile was just another nail in the coffin. Too bright, too genuine. 

"Cool. I'll see you at dinner?" Without even waiting, he was turning to stride away. Just as she thought he was gone, he stopped and regarded her with one last look, chewing his lip before giving her a soft smile. "And Beth? I love you, y'know?" 

Picking restlessly at her food, Beth nodded. He hesitated in the silence, clearly waiting for some answer, before shaking his head with a crooked smile and walking away. 

When he was just passing out of sight, Beth lowered her head to regard her shoes. "I know," she muttered.

  
  


*****

Glenn had only been gone ten whole minutes before she heard the crunch of gravel under boots.

Her appetite was gone, but sitting on the bench in the open air, she hadn't been able to work up the desire to go back inside the pantry. It was a minor concession, accepting the sprawling backyard if she couldn’t be free outside the walls, but every day seemed to beat her down into further compromise. It felt like there was time counting down, like her patience was finite and even she didn’t know what would happen once that well was drained dry. 

It had been an odd day, so maybe she was feeling more out of sorts than was even normal for her. 

Briefly she considered returning to Gabriel's church. 

A collection of sparrows had assembled a few feet away, and she was crumbling her flatbread and throwing bits their way. The small round birds were quiet in their frantic pecking at the mealy bread, quieter than she remembered them being. She idly questioned if like humans, the animals had adapted to the new world with silence. Even birds, with their wings and gift of flight, could be snatched and gobbled if they were too loud in their bushes and nests. 

She wondered if she was quick enough to catch one. If she did, she wondered how easily it's hollow bones would break in her hand. 

"Bit of a waste, don'tcha think?" His voice rasped from her periphery, and freezing, she slowly lifted and raised her head. 

Like the birds, she didn't want to scare him away. 

"Only if no one eats it." She shrugged, picking off another piece and crumbling it between her thumb and index. When the crumbs hit the ground a second later, small wings rustled and pattered in their haste to snatch up the best bites. "See?" 

With a scoff, Daryl rolled one heavy shoulder. Muttering under his breath, she made out what sounded like "Damn girl would feed the birds." 

A comfortable silence followed. Her throwing scraps to the sparrows, him hovering dark and quiet on the edges. She was nearly down to the last of the so-called bread and meat before he spoke again. 

"We got a couple more hours of daylight left." He said, adjusting the strap of his bow on his shoulder. Despite the innocuous statement, she could see the tension wafting off of him, and the way he seemed to be winding himself up. Silent as a church mouse, she blinked slowly and threw a few more morsels to the birds. 

"Was thinkin' I'd check the eastern snares before it got dark," he continued, eyes dark and hidden by the shadows of his hair. "Was also thinkin' that maybe you'd like to come along." He said it like he was holding back a cringe, but why she didn’t know. Maybe he still wasn't ready, but felt like he owed it to her after making her wait. Or maybe, like she sometimes suspected, he just hated hearing the sound of his own voice. 

"I'd like that," she agreed, angling her tone somewhere between light and firm. Dropping the last of the sandwich on the ground by her feet, she watched the birds flutter restlessly, too cautious to come so close but anxious to take the food. Rising from her seat she wiped her hands together and watched the sparrows scramble back several feet, and it wasn't lost on her how Daryl seemed to lean his weight back on his own heels. 

So frightened, but here he was, making his move. 

Lips quirking towards a smile, she stepped towards him and watched his weight shift, first angling away and then back towards her. "Were you ready to go, or did you need anything first?" 

Another shrug. "Nah," he said, his muscles tense with the need to fidget but being reigned in. "Got everythin' I need. Just needed-" He stopped abruptly, his teeth plucking restlessly at his bottom lip. She wanted to bat at him to stop, but even more she wanted her teeth to take their place. It wasn't the first time she had wondered what his thin lips would feel like on hers, dry and chapped. How soft the flesh would be if she caught it in her teeth, how slick and coppery his blood would be if she bit down and tasted it on her tongue. 

It was slowly creeping up on her, the realization that she wanted him inside of her as much as she wanted inside him. And better yet, there were many different ways she could accomplish that. 

This time Beth did smile, and her face didn't creak under the weight of it. "Just needed me?" She guessed, and the words hung there in the air until he scoffed and looked away. 

"We're burnin' daylight," he said instead. As brusque as the words were, it was empty of any real aggravation. His anxiety was bleeding out of him no matter how neutral and stalwart his expression was, and it did nothing to cool the simmer of bubbling heat building from her gut up to her throat. 

She wanted to reach out and touch him so badly. 

"You're right, let's go." She encouraged instead, eager to leave the walls and the watching eyes. It hit her then, just how much this was what she wanted and needed. To be out in the open with him. To crawl back into the uncertainty of the sprawling woods with her knife and his bow, to have the dead pressing in on them from every side. Her heart leapt and ached sweetly at the idea of having him so far away, to herself, to be at each other's mercy and subject to the cruelty of the unfettered new world. 

It was everything she had been begging for since walking through that damned gate. 

"C'mon," he grunted, jutting his chin in the direction of the gate, and without hesitation she followed. Out of sheer instinct her hand fell to her hip, to the too-big knife that didn’t suit her hand, and when her eyes left the shaggy back of his head, they hesitated at the slim leather sheath at his hip. 

Even after leaving her, he'd still carried her with him. 

Fondness and fierce possession danced on her chest, suffocating and bittersweet, and once they passed the threshold of the gate, she let her hand brush his. 

Ten feet out she did it again. 

Twenty feet. 

Thirty. 

Fifty feet into the adjoining woods, she felt his hand brush her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments, thoughts, feelings, etc? Leave them below.
> 
> If you're curious about Carol's acorn flatbread, [here](https://honest-food.net/foraging-recipes/acorns-nuts-and-other-wild-starches/acorn-flatbreads/) is a similar recipe.


	3. Thought you could see it then

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Cause you ain’t no canary,” he said, voice low and only slightly hoarse. “Can’t lock you up, keep ya safe, and expect you to live."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So long story short, this year _sucked._ The majority of this chapter was actually written back in March, but then life decided to open up a can of whoop-ass and uh... well, here were are in October. Happy Halloween, y'all. 
> 
> Note, the ending portion of this chapter is _heavily_ un-edited. I'll likely be tidying it up over the next few days. Please have patience with me.

Every step further into the blur of green, brown, and grey felt like it chipped away at a piece of her ill-fitting mask. The tension in her shoulders retreated, her spine straightened, and for the first time in days her fingers were not bent and curled into claws. Silence reigned in between the soft sounds of their steps through the detritus of the forest floor, and even the far-off sound of bird-song was muffled and meek compared to their footsteps.

In the open, with death sprawling out onto the horizon, it was easier to breathe.  


The same cageyness that had been smothering her was lifting off of Daryl as well. It came off in increments. His shoulders unwinding from where they were stiff, his chin rising from where it had been ducked down close to his chest. Even underneath the controlled hunter's stance he used to pick his way along their path eased, some of his usual loose-limbed swagger peeking through in the way he swung his weight into each step. It drew her eye up the planes of his body, first from his battered boots up his long legs, then the lines and angles of his torso. She could almost squint and pretend they had gone back in time. That some-how they were still wandering and lost in Georgia, that the funeral home had just been one stop of many in their journey. But as she tried to mold and fit that little fantasy, it was just as easily shattered by looking back at the man. He was darker, greyer, like all the color had seeped out of him. From his clothes to his beard, even the sloe blue of his eyes, everything had gone dull while she was away.  


She wondered if she had lost her colors as well. If like a polaroid left in the sun she had warped and bleached away, leaving behind a distorted mark where she had once existed ardent and bright against the withering backdrop of the world's decay. Glancing down she took in her scuffed cowboy boots and faded blue jeans and tried to remember the last time she had stopped to look at herself. Beyond the boring rituals of hygiene, or necessity, she couldn’t recall the last time she had looked in the mirror just to _look_.  


Her eyes cut to Daryl's back. The stretch of his shoulders and the black of his vest, the wings dingy and dark, nearly indistinguishable against the leather. The flicker of his eyes, once rich and blue, now nearly grey.  


The heat in her belly simmered and crawled up towards her throat, and she decided there were other things she preferred to look at.  


"You ain't as loud as you used to be," Daryl said suddenly. His head jerked in her direction, eyes lingering only a second before sweeping over the area. "Used to thunder around like a damn bull. Couldn't ever figure how such a little thing could make that much of a racket."  


Had she been? She couldn't remember it that clearly. She remembered campfires, briars sticking to her clothes and skin, his smell and steady warmth at her side. Days and nights blurred together in her memory, compounding and condensing into snapshots. It made her want to shake her head at that girl, the one who had bled color into a stark world and hadn't guarded her steps.  


"Loud don't keep you alive," Beth said honestly, hand resting on the hilt of her knife. Her skin had gone hot and tight at his voice, then just as abruptly soothed itself. "And I had to learn. Out here, by myself. Wasn't quick, not really. Had some close calls. Remembered most of what you'd been teachin' me, so I had that, and then figured out the rest."  


He nodded but lapsed back into silence, and even from his profile she could see the way his brows were knitted together, his lips drawn thin from where he chewed at them. Minutes ticked by as they walked, the quiet stretching between them as she waited for him to say what was on his mind.  


She was surprised that her patience was rewarded quickly when he suddenly came to a stop. He turned and met her eyes and shuttered as his expression was, the twitch of his jaw gave away that he was still gnawing at his inner lip.  


"Still puttin' too much weight on the front foot," he grunted with a nod to her feet. "Front foot leads, finds the quiet spots. Back foot holds your weight."  


Blinking slowly, Beth adjusted her stance. "Better?" She asked, keeping her voice plain.  


She didn't want to spook him.  


The immediate answer was no more than a blunt nod. It was that hesitation again. Subtle enough that if she hadn't known better she would have missed it, but his reluctance was there in the shift of his weight and the way his eyes spanned across her, skipping and avoiding her eyes as though they might scald if he met them dead on. He wanted to say something, to rip off the bandage and talk to her, but the words were lodged in his throat and choking him. She doubted that he meant to say anything about her footwork at all, that he had been on the edge of saying something else, anything, but it slipped away from him the second he opened his mouth. He had the bluntest tongue she knew, but when it came to his inner thoughts and emotions, he was functionally mute.  


For a moment she imagined what would happen if she were to open his throat for him. Cradle her knife under the hinge of his jaw and pull in one motion, split his skin with tenderness, paint his ashen misery with swathes of blooming red. If she would find his words and thoughts trapped inside, bottlenecked and caught behind his Adam's apple, just waiting to be set free from his obstinate vocal chords.  


"Yeah," his voice was thick and her fingers twitched where they hovered at her knife. "Better. C'mon."  


"How much further do we have?" She asked, matching his pace. His longer strides made her have to play catch up, hopping like a deer in quick overlapping steps when she changed her weight and balance to compensate. She hadn't been loud before, not really, but he was right when he said she'd be quieter. There was still the soft rustle of leaves underfoot, the ground crisp and dry where the sunlight broke through the trees to bake the ground, but the crunches and snaps had dimmed to a whisper.  


"Not far," he shrugged, rolling one shoulder. "Don't see the point in settin' up traps too far out. The game'd be snatched up by walkers 'fore we could get it. And there's been talk of trying to bring back a few rabbits alive. Best way to do that is if they ain't killed themselves trying to squirm out of the snares."  


"Doubt you mean them for pets."  


He snorted. "Nah. Though some of the lil' ones might get that in their heads. Wouldn't be hard to build a few hutches. Get them all set up, let'em do their thing. Pretty sure the bitch is only pregnant for 'bout a month, then they go right back to it. Give it six months and there could be a steady meat supply."  


Beth looked at him curiously. "I never pegged you for a rabbit farmer."  


"I sure as hell ain't lookin' to be," he scoffed, staring at the ground ahead. "Aaron threw it out there. It's a smart play, no reason not to try."  


With a hum Beth mimicked his shrug, raising one small shoulder and scanning the trees. "Sad, though. Don’t you think?" She remarked. "Being locked up in a cage like that, just waitin'. Knowing that when the door opens there's nowhere to run and you're gonna get eaten."  


Silence fell between them.  


"Just rabbits," he grit out just when too many seconds had passed.  


"Yeah," she said. There was a drum under her breastbone beating out a rhythm that told her it wasn't rabbits. He knew it too. His unease was controlled, but it still clung to his skin like a fine sweat and dripped from his pores. Despite her efforts to not spook him she _had_ , and her teeth grit in irritation. Irritation at him for not _looking_ at her. Irritation in the fact she still paraded around in a dead girl's mask.  


Irritation that she was broken and he wasn't. Not fully. Not yet.  


"Farm girl like you should be used to it," Daryl said after a minute. The gruff, stilted quality of his voice was made her lips twitch with the urge to smile. It was just one last half-hearted dig before he was willing to let the words fall to the ground and be forgotten. Almost childlike in its pettiness.  


"I don't think I'm really a farm girl anymore," she admitted, her eyes tracking him as much as the open woods.  


The Greene farm was stamped deeply into her memories, but the images in her head didn't sit right. Like puzzle pieces left in the rain, the basics were there, but the shapes had water-logged and bloated before curling in on themselves. They no longer fit. She remembered pastures and orchards, large herds of livestock, even the ghosts of family members as they stepped through a proud standing home. But the warmth had seeped from it, the sunshine replaced by a dull haze that bowed and warped her childhood haven into some misshaped parody of what it must have been.  


She remembered her mother's slender hands and her daddy's smile, she knew the sound of Shawn's steps as he barreled down the stairs, but when she tried to picture their faces there was nothing but shadows.  


There was a chance her memories of it had broken along with the rest of her, or maybe she was just seeing it fresh for the first time. Maybe it had always been so hollow, but the old her had been too good to see it. Or maybe all the solidity and warmth she had once known there to be had been folded and tucked into a little box, hidden some-where deep and far away, because there was no room for it beside the vicious song that sung behind her ribs.  


A warm hand brushed against hers, and she blinked in surprise. With a glance she realized that Daryl had slowed his pace, and despite the stubborn knit between his brows and the flat line of his lips, his eyes were softer than they had been the minute before. His irritation lingered but beside it now was something sweeter. Looking down she saw his arm hanging loosely between their sides, and just as he stepped away, his skin brushed hers once more. It was simple, as clumsy as it was meant to be gentle, but the touch made the heat pool in her belly and boil up towards her throat. She wanted to reach and grab him back, drag him close, but she stayed her hand and breathed slowly outward as he resumed his previous place a few paces ahead of her.  


"Farm girls are tough," he said simply. "But you're tougher."  


*****

  
True to his word, it wasn't much farther to the snares. Despite the trek through some of the denser parts of the woods, they were actually set about three hundred feet behind a small cluster of shabby homes, just outside of the main suburb. There were sparser trees but large wild shrubs clustered in the tall grass, and she knew that the area Daryl had picked would be ripe with tunnels and rabbit warrens.  


Before she could even start to speculate on where the snares were, she noticed the sour smell of decay was heavy in the air.  


Her hand was already drawing her knife, big and bulky in her small hand, when Daryl stopped and raised a fist in warning. His knees had already bent into his hunting crouch and the crossbow was shrugged off his back and swung up into his arms.  


"Gotta be a few of 'em nearby," he muttered lowly.  


Beth was suddenly very aware of the fact her gun was still sitting neatly in the armory lockup and nearly cursed. The knife in her hand was a trusted friend and had served her well out on the road but a gun, loud and reckless as it was, could be the difference between survival and failure. Gritting her teeth, she gripped the textured handle of the large blade and surveyed the area. The trees were sparse and aside from the random thickets of tall grass and bushes there wasn't much cover. Unless there was a larger herd farther off the chances were that the dead waiting for them were very close.  


Out of the corner of her eyes she watched as Daryl shuffled forward, a bolt already loaded and guiding his way. She copied his stance, knees bent and feet firmly planted on the ground, her knife raised in anticipation. Aside from the smell the small field was strangely undisturbed, and she noted the lack of bird chatter. Even the trees were silent.  


"The snares?" She whispered, ignoring the harsh drum of her heart and the prickle of excitement that licked at her spine.  


Daryl's answer was a short nod. Veering to the right he gave the taller shrubs a wide berth, his narrow eyes scanning the area. With him covering the way forward Beth turned her attention to the periphery, jaw set as she checked to the sides and behind them. The grass wasn't tall enough to conceal any crawlers but that didn't stop her from examining the ground, wary of any bony fingers that might grab for their ankles.  


As surely as she trusted herself, she trusted him. But that didn't mean she was taking any chances.  


No matter how carefully Daryl stepped, the grass rustled loudly against his shins with each step. She mirrored his steps, a few paces behind, carefully finding his same footholds where she could. The path he cut was wide and circular, guiding her around the tallest and thickest bushes. There wasn't enough cover for a standing man, but as they eased in around and closer she heard the wet sounds of flesh tearing, and her lips twitched in response to the faint rasp of a walker's groan.  


The sight that greeted them was bent backs and blood slick limbs. Blackened mouths gaped and oozed as they shoveled scraps of bloody flesh and matted fur between their leering teeth.  


Three of them.  


She heard the thwack of the bolt releasing, and a second later one of the bodies crumpled and fell with a dull thud. A glance told her Daryl had lowered the bow to reload, and though she knew it wouldn't take him long, the other two bodies were lurching to their feet and turning towards the promise of fresher meat. Her knife was heavy in her hand, blood was rushing and roaring in her ears and excitement crackling along her bones, and she stepped forward in time with the walkers.  


A few long strides was all it took. One moment she was side-by-side with Daryl in the tall grass, and the next she was nearly face to face with a walker. The groan that rattled out of it was wheezing and wet, and without hesitation she caught it by the shoulder with one hand, bracing before she swung her knife around to catch it in the temple. Brittle as the bone was it was just a shudder and a snap before the body stumbled and fell to the side.  


The last one was taller.  


Taller than she'd thought when she'd seen it crouched over its kill.  


Her blood was still singing in her ears, but she retreated a few steps. Time and rot had made the walker gangling and loping as it shuffled towards her, but the height and long arms put her at a disadvantage. Taller than Daryl, maybe even taller than Abraham, it had reach where she didn't. She needed to get it on the ground, otherwise she risked a bite.  


She heard the snap of Daryl loading a bolt, and nearly gave into the temptation to look. Instead she darted back further, giving the shuffling biter a wider berth.  


"Don't. I can do it," she said.  


"It's a clean shot. I've got it."  


"I said _don't_." Even to her own ears she sounded petulant. With the lit of her voice, the warble of youth, it was unmistakable, but she didn't dwell on it. Childish seeming or not, there was a crackling tinder in her joints. She'd been waiting for this. Every day since being locked within the walls she had ached for it. She had missed running for her life. She'd craved the painful patter of her heart beating against her ribcage.  


Her knife had been too dry for too long.  


The bare bones of a strategy flew through her mind like snapshots. Utilize the brush. Let the terrain do her work for her by tangling and unbalancing her opponent. Use it's unsure footing against it to get it down, and drive her blade into the softest point of its rotten skull.  


She managed a single step towards the bushes when she heard the twang of the bowstring, and the walker fell.  


Her surprise didn't linger. Instead, a hot swell of rage filled its place.  


"What the hell is wrong with you?" She demanded, whirling on him.  


Daryl's expression was an odd one. The frown lines of his mouth were dug deep into his skin, but his brow had the softer pinch of confusion. Eyes flicking between the walker and her, he didn’t seem to know where to look.  


"You were actin' like a damn fool," he finally settled on.  


"I could handle it," she yelled in response. At the volume he gave the faintest glare, his eyes darting to scan the area. "I've done it before. Day after day. You don't gotta baby me anymore."  


"Watchin' your back ain't babyin' you." He seemed too perplexed to fall into the easy grasp of anger. Confused with her, confused with the situation, and from the faint shuffle of his feet she instinctively knew that he wanted to walk away. It wasn't cowardice, the man didn't have a cowardly bone in his body, but when social interactions didn't go the way he expected it was easiest for him to retreat. In a fight, in a hunt, he was at an advantage. When it came to simple words he never seemed certain of his footing. "You think I'm babyin' Rick when I watch his back? Michonne? Carol?"  


"I didn't need you to. I didn't _want_ you to." She'd wanted that triumph for herself. The jittery need to push and pull and tear had burrowed an echo of a tremble into her limbs. She needed to hurt something. She needed a body to slump by her feet.  


Daryl's attention turned shrewd. Searching. "Y'ain't gotta prove yourself. I know what you can do. Can guess what you've gotta have done. Carryin' on like that? Takin' on risks like that? It ain't worth it."  


"Is that what you think?" She asked, unsure why her chest suddenly felt so pinched. Her anger was still churning in her belly, but instead of red hot it had curled tightly into a cold little ball. Disappointment stung at her eyes, but like her knife, they remained dry. She finally had him looking at her, talking to her, but he still didn’t see her. How a man who saw so much could be so blind, she didn't understand.  


"You think I just wanna, what? Put on some performance for you? Go on and make some big scene to try and prove myself?"  


Daryl snorted, shuffling his feet and rolling his shoulder like he could brush off the irritation that was trying to settle. Like a shock of static electricity she remembered Shawn's colt, the one he spent a whole summer trying to break in. The stubborn thing would toss its head and stomp its hooves if you so much as looked at him, but behind the bravado and posturing had just been a beast trying to hide just how nervous the threat of a bridle made it.  


"Ain't sayin' nothing like that."  


"But you're thinkin' it?" Beth demanded. "Huh? You think just cause I sung a few songs when things were sweet that I'm just gonna put on a show?"  


"I think you forgot you ain't alone no more!" He ground out, shouldering the bow roughly. "You been watchin' your skin day and night against hell only knows what, and you still tryin' to take on the whole damn world yourself." Muttering under his breath he turned from her and marched away, only to still and turn back. "Ain't like that anymore. You got people. You got me. So _use_ me."  


The words should have been said with scorn. Condescension maybe. She’d bet her boots that was what he’d been aiming for. But instead, like a rubber band snapping against her skin, Beth realized it was a plea. No matter how gruff the words were, she saw the crack open in him like a fissure. She may have been a broken doll, her porcelain crumbled and shattered, but he was her tin soldier. He was weathered and rusting, and with just those words alone, she saw another piece of him begin to break.  


The anger still simmered, but something hungrier was building beside it. Something sweet but thirsty, making her throat dry and her lower belly churn with something other than rage. He was still being more a fool than she could possibly be that day. Willfully blind. But that tease of weakness didn’t disgust her. Not the way it would have with Maggie, or Glenn.  


Instead she felt ignited. Wanting.  


“You’re scared” She said, watching the way his fingers clenched around the bow. “You’re scared of what happened, and that it’ll happen again.”  


He didn’t insult her by trying to deny it. There was no bluster, just silence as he stared out at the tree line. If it hadn’t been for the twitch in his jaw, the tell that he was likely chewing at his inner lip, she would have thought he wasn’t listening.  


“But you still brought me out here,” she continued. “You’re scared, but you still wanted me to come with you. Didn't even think about tryin’ to keep me in the walls. You say I gotta let you back me up? Alright. But why? Why even bring me here if you’re so afraid?”  


“Cause you ain’t no canary,” he said, voice low and only slightly hoarse. “Can’t lock you up, keep ya safe, and expect you to live. You gotta be out here. Gotta live in this world if you’re gonna be a part of it.” His head turned, and she knew he was looking at her. The limp fall of his hair obscured his eyes, but she could feel them digging into her skin.  


“You made it this far. Like some bat outta hell you made it this whole way. But someday some sumbitch is going to get mean and stupid try some shit. And when he does, I'm gonna kill him.”  


“You killed Dawn.” She whispered, the snakes in her belly alight and wiggling. Her and him, they were standing on the edge of something. The cracks in him were creaking open, she could see them splintering and she just needed to get her fingers in so she could pry him open. “They told me, after. I asked where she was and they said a man shot her. I knew it was you.”  


“She'd killed you.” His voice, so gritty and packed with earth, was wobbling and wispy. He was bleeding smoke and she wanted to reach for him.  


“So you wanna avenge me. Even though I’m right here.”  


“I shoulda killed every bastard in that place. Never gone along with that dumb hand-off plan. Should’ve just...” he sucked in a breath through his teeth, chin jerking down towards his chest, and suddenly Beth wondered if he could actually feel his edges as they unraveled.  


He wasn’t just scared. He was angry. The lustful kind, the kind that burrowed and dug into your guts like a parasite. Whether it was at himself, or her, or both she wasn’t sure. He hated himself for failing her, and hated her for flaunting that failure in his face. She’d not only had the audacity to die. She'd had the gall to _live_.  


She was all his failures, his pain, his self-loathing in one pretty, fucked up package.  


“You didn’t have to,” she said softly. Soft as her footsteps, heel to toe, as she crept up to him. He was wavering, so close to spooking, not nearly ready enough, but she didn’t care. Her patience was a worn away string of self-control by this time, and she didn’t resist her own wanting when she reached for his wrist.  


He twitched when her skin met his. Not quite a flinch, but close. With a hum she fit her fingers around his skin in a bracelet, felt the patter of his blood as it thrummed under his flesh, marveled at how thick his wrist was compared to her own. Her fingertips didn’t touch, and she basked in the knowledge that strength and pain fit together so beautifully.  


“You didn’t have to,” she repeated, stronger this time. His chin lifted and their eyes met.  


She didn’t offer him any false smiles, or masks of teeth and gums. Her voice didn’t twist to sweet and chirping. She didn’t make herself small. She looked him in the eyes and squeezed his wrist, felt his pulse jump under her fingers, and let her face fall and settle into something that felt less forced, less like wearing a dead girl as a mask.  


“I did.”  


Like a shiver, anticipation buzzed in her chest. They were so close, so close to him seeing her. She wasn’t hiding anything from him now, bare as she had been when her blood has spread across linoleum like an oil spill. This was intimacy, this was honesty, this was truth as pure as it could be before she dug her knife in and carved a way to his heart, taking it for herself.  


“There’ll be someone else. There'll always be someone else, some bastard will come, Beth. I ain’t gonna do it again.” His voice was hoarse, creaking like an old hinge, and if she hadn’t known any better she would have guessed he’d been chain smoking all day. He was coming apart, the fire was taking him, and a song that sounded like elation was filling the space the rage had been moments before.  


“I’ll die first. Take every single bastard with me. But I ain’t gonna watch this shit happen again.”  


She's not sure just when he’d shouldered the bow. Sometime in the nebulous space between her mask falling and him beginning the break apart. But his free hand rose and a warm, calloused thumb brushed the puckered circle of rough flesh on her forehead.  


“You don’t gotta,” she promised. It was an empty promise, as empty as the ones she and Sasha had shared. Daryl was right, someone would always come. But their shattered edges promised their salvation. If they died, it would be in a brilliant massacre, a show of blood and sinew, of smoke and ashes.  


They would die as wolves, not as sheep.  


“I killed everyone left in Grady,” she confessed, her voice a whisper that neared husky. “Those who wanted to go, I let’em leave. But the rest, the ones who just let those things happen? Let what they did to me happen?” She sighed, a tremulous breath. “They burned, Daryl. That whole damn place went up in flames. You don’t gotta avenge me. I’m here.”  


He didn’t offer her any words. That suited her fine, she knew they didn’t need them. Instead the pad of his thumb brushed over her scar in a curious back and forth, like a nervous tick, and she felt the tinder in her bones crackle and warm. He was so close, so heavy and weighed down, so large when compared to her small. But she could bend him, break him, rip him open and keep him for herself.  


Tilting her head, she pushed up on her toes and brushed his lips with hers. A whisper of a kiss, chaste even. Just enough to feel the tug of chapped skin and the scrape of scruff, before his shoulders tensed and his head reared back, the whites of his eyes flashing.  


“Girl, don’t.”  


Frowning, she squeezed his thick wrist tighter. Felt the way his pulse jumped and rabbited.  


“Why not. I’m here. I want to. We _can_.”  


His head was already shaking, his mouth thinning, and the bubble of anticipation in her belly popped and soured. Something was wrong. He was finally seeing, listening, but it was all wrong.  


“Not like that. Not like this. I can’t.”  


He made a mistake there. Didn’t weigh his words carefully enough, failed the game of evasion. His truth was spilled, and she latched on to it with a dead-man's hunger.

“But you want to,” she pressed, crowding into him, taking the opportunity to bump his throat with her nose, smell the sweat and rot that clung to him. He reeked of a dead world and utter agony, and she wanted to soak him into her skin.  


“I don’t know what I want.” It was as much an admonishment as it was a confession. Eyebrows pinching, she looked up and noted the panicked look on his face, one which was repulsion and shame in equal measure. The shame she understood, counted on even, but her mouth pinched into a grim line at his disgust.  


“You want me. Maybe you’re still figurin’ it out, same as me. But I know that’s what it is. I want you. I want to keep you, and you want me too. I came back. So have me.”  


Silence stretched, and her heart pattered out an irregular beat. It wasn’t her victory song, it wasn’t her war drums. Something had gone horribly askew but it was still so close to her grasp. It was frustrating, maddening even, to have him so close, to have his heart close enough she could sink her teeth in and take a bite, but have him so reticent.  


“Did you?”  


His voice was a murmur. The kind that made her think he wasn’t even asking her. Daryl wasn’t a man she considered prone to idle think-talking, never the man to murmur his thoughts to himself. But the words slipped from him like a secret, like a stray thought that had finally burst from the dam in his throat and gotten lost in the currents.  


His touch was hesitant, but the thumb was back. This time, instead of brushing the scar, his fingers brushed over her scalp and the tangles of her hair. Something stewed in her gut, something like dread that churned was bubbled like it was on the starting line, just waiting to transform to anger.  


But alongside it was a strange giddiness.  


“Did I what?” She breathed, her skin tightening, her skin chipping away into cracks and fissures. Porcelain was falling to their feet as her mask dropped away.  


Daryl’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and maybe it was the light, but there was more of a sheen to his eyes than she remembered there being before. His body language had gone all cock-eyed, once stiff but rooted he was now cadgey. She could feel his muscles twitching and pulling under his skin, desperate to move, run, escape even while his feet were firmly planted. She was angry, petulant maybe, to have been denied her kiss. But despite the dread, despite the fact that she was going to have to work so much harder, push so much more, dig her nails into his flesh and rend it, she could already feel the smile pulling at her lips.  


“Say it, Daryl. Did I what?”  


To a stranger, his expression could be misconstrued as building towards anger.  


But she knew him. She knew how to read him, and the flutter of his pulse against her fingertips was just subtitles for her added benefit.  


“Did you come back?”  


Possibly for the first time since Atlanta, he was really seeing.  


And what he saw was breaking his heart.  


Smothering a grin, she figured she could work with that.  



End file.
